Rachel Kimura conducted more than a few experiments during the first growing season on her 1/8-acre Hinata Farms. One was an Asian version of the Native American companion planting method known as the Three Sisters. Kimura, one of eight small commercial farmers operating on a largely empty lot on the site of the former Robert Taylor Homes, planted popcorn on the edge of her plot. The stalks served as trellises for purple and green long beans to climb as they fixed nitrogen in the soil, while kabocha squash sprawled on the grounds to shade out weeds. But she didn’t count on vine borers attacking the squash. She could’ve surgically removed them with her bypass pruners, plant by plant, but it seemed too labor intensive for a crop she’d only get to harvest once at the end of her season.
Apart from Green Acres Farm in North Judson, Indiana, the Pear Angel Oriana Kruszewski, and the Global Garden Refugee Farm, growing commercial Asian crops isn’t common locally, she says. “I think a lot of immigrant families don’t want their kids to be farmers.” Though her family had a small garden in the West Rogers Park backyard where she grew up, her parents didn’t expect she’d become one either. They immigrated in the early 80s, her dad to succeed an aging minister at a Tenrikyo temple.
Two years ago, she’d left teaching, and was working as a paralegal and volunteering every week at the Garfield Park Conservatory when she applied for a Windy City Harvest Apprenticeship, an eight-month urban agriculture training program run by the Chicago Botanic Garden. “Ten years later I’m still thinking about all of this stuff,” she says. “I had to try. If I gave it my all, and it didn’t work out, then at least I know I tried.” After completing the program she applied for and was offered a plot at the Legends South Farm among other small farmers such as Just Roots, Finding Justice, and Good Vibes/Nodding Onion Farm, each with their own growing and marketing models.
